I am the Founder of NOSTALAB--a digital health think tank with a focus on health, medicine and technology. My current passion is to advance the role of social media and technology in healthcare. I am currently the #1 Kred-ranked health influencer and in the top .01% of influencers in marketing, health, doctors and social media. I cut my teeth at Ogilvy CommonHealth, the world’s largest healthcare communications company and have held a series of positions including Chief Creative Officer, Chief Strategic Officer and unit President.

1984 All Over Again--The Digital Health Revolution

It was in all the papers. Or should I say all the video screens. The monolithic theology loomed large and unstoppable…

Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created, for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology—where each worker may bloom, secure from the pests purveying contradictory truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death, and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

Until another voice was heard. It was AppleApple‘s declaration of digital independence. The bold visual and message ushered in the generation of the personal computer and empowered consumers. Humanity was saved from the clutches of oppression and freed to, well, change the world.

Who is the oppressor today? The burden of health and healthcare is significant and carries with it a yoke of oppression that makes change an imperative from almost any perspective. Politics, economics, wellness, employment, insurance, bureaucracy and many other issues all combine with health to create the makings of a healthcare cataclysmic event that conjures images of that famous Apple TV spot.

The pill. The physician. The process. The procedure. All are the steps of care–marching in monotony–that are protected by the ‘logic and intellect’ of the system. One step after another. All guarded by gate-keepers who, sometimes, know better.

The Brave New ‘Digital Health’ World

Today, digital health very well may be that large brass-headed hammer poised to disrupt and change healthcare. The ‘quantified self’ is being transformed to a ‘liberated self’ where personalized data chart the new course for care and wellness. John Sculley, former Apple CEO, has experienced both sides of this story. A leader in the PC marketplace and a vocal advocate and investor in digital health. He’s someone who sees it coming…

These days my passion is ‘The Consumer Era of Health Services’. When Steve Jobs recruited me to Silicon Valley as the first Big Brand marketer, he saw the future of microprocessors in terms of personal appliances that eventually should be marketed as consumer brands. 30 years later, I’m inspired by a similar opportunity which can disrupt an even larger industry, the $2.8 trillion healthcare industry. So I’m helping entrepreneurs build several exciting companies focused on big themes like consumer engagement and behavior modification; tele health via mobile devices; chronic care patient diagnostics, therapy and compliance; drug adherence and prescription abandonment; quantified self using sensors and Big Data. From a technology standpoint, ‘sensors’ are the equivalent to what ‘microprocessors’ were 30 years ago. Microprocessors progression followed the linear scale of ‘Moore Law‘, but sensors are growing on an ‘exponential scale’. For example, I am on the Cisco advisory board for the Internet of Things. Their predictions are that by 2020 there will be 30 billion wirelessly connected devices. This is M2M and almost entirely driven by sensors. Then, combine sensors with the exponential growth of computation and storage via Big Data analytics (e.g. We had 800 Extrabytes of data in the cloud in 2008 vs projected 35,000 Extrabytes of data today) and you can see the possibilities that this revolution has the potential to exceed by multiple orders of magnitude that I witnessed in Silicon Valley in the 1980s.

I remember when people would say that they really don’t need a PC. And from a similar perspective, digital health has been labeled as overly optimistic or even unrealistic. And while I respect many of those opinions, I side with that Apple commercial that ran only once but still plays today.

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Great post, John! I agree – there are many parallels with the high-tech revolution of the 80′s. There will be change, and the established medical community will continue to resist. The Quantified-Selfers are the “early adopters,” to borrow from Geoffrey Moore’s framework, and we are now facing the “chasm” – there is still much work to do so that the mainstream will be ready to accept that digital health will lead to new ways for providing care.

Contemporary “Healthcare” (neither “health” nor “care”) is intrinsically fascist. Yours is the first article I’ve seen to come close the that understanding. When you do what we say, we love you and give you everything, but if you don’t …

Fear, Legend, Anonymity,Greed, and Groupthink. Not an uplifting concatenation.

Healthcare is a political and economic football: bread and circuses for the masses.

Yet the ready solution is where one would least expect it. MAL MD FACP

Contemporary “Healthcare” (neither “health” nor “care”) is intrinsically fascist. Yours is the first article I’ve seen to come close the that understanding. When you do what we say, we love you and give you everything, but if you don’t …

Fear, Legend, Anonymity,Greed, and Groupthink. Not an uplifting concatenation.

Healthcare is a political and economic football: bread and circuses for the masses.

Yet the ready solution is where one would least expect it. MAL MD FACP

I am not sure that I would be using John Sculley as the prime example of successful future gazing, he does make some very valid points. However, just because we can connect everything, including internal and external sensors in human beings doesn’t mean that it is the optimal way to improve healthcare. The problem with most of the digital health companies is that they are extrapolating from non healthcare businesses into healthcare, without recognizing the complexity of the the industry and its substrate, humans. There is still a need for the clinicians to drive the innovation, and whilst many are locked into the “logic and intellect” locked system, they are capable of breaking out of that system if the regulatory and financial barriers are removed.

Maybe I am just getting old and conservative, but I don’t see the healthcare system is actually the oppressor portrayed. I agree there are many in the system who are risk averse, but lets be honest, there is much at risk here, so the proverbial bleeding edge is not necessarily where you want to be.

Your comment about digital health being the brass headed hammer is very apt, but often to people who have a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and healthcare is a good example of that. Whilst there is some very interesting stuff happening in the quantified self there is to date no real evidence that monitoring everything actually has any nett health benefit.

For those of us who remember 1984, it is important to note that as a result of that launch and a few other factors Steve Jobs was ejected from Apple for 10 years, he company went into a tail spin, and it wasn’t till the launch of the iPod and their entry into the music business that they recovered. Unfortunately in healthcare that sort of tailspin would cause much pain and hardship.